Salted snacks such as fabricated corn chips are popular consumer snack products. Many people who enjoy eating corn chips also want to or need to reduce the level of digestible fat in their diets. Corn products contain corn oil so even baked corn chips will contain some digestible fat. Corn masa-based products are made by forming corn masa dough into the desired shape and cooking the shaped masa. These fabricated corn products are preferably cooked by immersing them in a frying fat medium that has been heated to temperatures of approximately 300.degree. F. to 450.degree. F. (148.9.degree. C. to 232.degree. C.). The fabricated snack pieces are fried for varying lengths of time, typically on the order of about 10 seconds to about 3.5 minutes. During frying the pieces absorb a substantial quantity of the frying fat, generally on the order of from about 20% to about 50% by weight of the cooked and seasoned snack or chip. Typically, a digestible-fat, e.g., corn oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil or peanut oil is used for cooking. These oils have a caloric content of about 9 calories per gram of oil digested. A fried corn snack can contain from about 20 grams to 50 grams of digestible-fat per 100 grams of product which contributes from 180 to 450 calories per 100 grams of product. A single serving of regular corn chips weighs about 30 grams. Five grams of absorbed digestible fat in a regular corn chip serving contributes about 45 calories.
Prior art corn chips as well as chips made from corn flours and corn masa blended with other starches and flavors that are cooked in reduced calorie fat or nondigestible fat are not fat free because the corn itself and many of the other corn chip ingredients contain significant levels of digestible fats. Thus, corn chips made with nondigestible fats can have digestible fats from the corn, emulsifiers and/or fillers, etc. Such chips are not fat free according to recognized standards.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a process for making a 30 gram serving of fat free corn chips which contains less than 0.5 gm of digestible fat per serving.